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It’s hard to think that in twenty-first century England there are still places which can be considered to be truly remote, when for many of us it may seem such a small and over populated island. But once you venture beyond the main dales roads of the Pennines into the deep folds and hollows that make up its vast hinterland of fell and moorland you can still find abandoned cottages and farmsteads where the changing world, with all its economic pressures, has made it impossible to scrape out a living within this harsh environment. Holgate is one such place, what was once a busy little hamlet is now a collections of broken barns and houses left to the mercy of the elements.

The Locked Door. Fomapan 100 5×4 90mm Angulon lens, Salt Print.

The settlement of Holgate like many others in the dales was always a community on the edge. It existed within a marginal environment and to make a living the farmers had to scratch their fields and pastures from the moorland around them. This practice of enclosing and improving parts of the open fell was known as Intaking and it was the endeavour and hard work of farmers and labourers of Holgate and similar upland farmers that kept the wilderness beyond their dry stone walls at bay. But this was a working community and the farmers were supported by a host of professional people. Records from 1841 show that 26 people called this little hamlet their home including a schoolmaster, shoemaker, mason, labourers and a dressmaker. Holgate together with Helwith and Kersey Green made up the New Forest township in the parish of Kirkby Ravensworth and in 1822 the parish records state that there were 67 people living within the 2,000 acres of common land and moorland, now only 10 people live and work in the whole area and Holgate itself is completely abandoned.

Broken Pane, Fomapan 100 120 6×9. Salt Print.

When you visit this lonely place in its advanced state of decay it’s hard to believe that it has been less than 25 years since the last resident locked their door and said farewell. It hasn’t taken long for nature to take its toll on the building. As you peer through open doorways and windows, as we did back in April, you can still see the remains of home comforts, a few sticks of old furniture, the fire places and kitchen stoves. The last house to be inhabited was Holgate house itself, built in 1741 the initials of its first owner the wealthy yeoman Leonard E. Spenceley are still proudly carved into the lintel above the front door, and until the 1990’s it was still a working farm. But now the roof slates have fallen rain water has seeped in and brought down ceilings. Moth-eaten curtains now hang in tatters from broken window panes, and soon it will be impossible for anyone to gain shelter in what was obviously once a grand little house.

The Last Home. Fomapan 100 5×4, 90mm Angulon lens. Salt Print.

It was fascinating to visit and explore Holgate and soak up the gothic atmosphere of the decay, but always in the back our minds was the thought that this was once someone’s home. These places are time capsules showing us a glimpse of the past. But who knows how long they will remain until the elements finish the work they have started and reduce them to a pile of stone foundations.

In my last post I spoke about the new Gallerina HQ opening it’s doors to the public and how I had pushed myself to create some new work for this special occasion. Well so far the response from the public for my latest pictures has been tremendous, it’s been so great it has inspired me to expirement more and see where it takes me.

One of the most daunting aspects of these multiple exposure pictures is choosing to work in a studio (as you can see it’s a very make shift one on my kitchen table) for the first time in a decade. It’s been a long time since I had to deal with the complications of lighting and I’d almost completely forgotten anything about compensating for extra bellows expansion or the dread Reciprocity Failure. The memories of my student days, and the boxes of beautiful Polaroid film I would waste, send shivers down my spine, trying to get my lighting and exposure right, it would cost me a fortune now!

But as an artist we should challenge ourselves, it can be so easy to stick to what you know, to follow the well worn path that you have created for yourself, mostly because it feels safe. Any artistic process involves putting a certain amount of your own emotions and personality into your creation, so there is always an irrational fear of it failing and being criticized, and you with it. But these fears are irrational, artistic expression will always be open to interpretation and we should fight against being stuck in that rut! Because that is often when we achieve something we are really proud of! Oh and I still haven’t remembered how to compensate for bellows expansion and Reciprocity Failure and I’m not sure I ever did, I think I may have always been working on intuition..

Many of you may not know but photography is not my only passion, I have another which has sometimes kept me away from the darkroom when I should have been working and sometimes away from my bed when I should have been sleeping, and that is the gentle art of fishing. So I was over the moon when I was given the opportunity to combine my two passions and create an article for the wonderful fishing journal Fallon’s Angler. I had a fantastic time exploring some of my favourite rivers with my 5×4 camera and a fishing rod while trying to capture some of the essence of being on the bankside and fond memories of fishing with my grandfather.

If you want to find out more and maybe purchase a copy to read for yourself please follow this link

It’s been a harsh winter so far with days and days of high winds and rain battering the North of Engalnd and Scotland. Rivers have been bursting their banks and destroying bridges roads and worst of all people’s homes. Like usual I have fallen behind with my blog posts but back in November before the worst of the weather hit I visited the Low Barns Nature Reserve which is run by the Durham Wildlife Trust with the aim of testing out some more expired Polaroid Type 665 a photographer friend had sent me from Sweden. The reserve is nestled in a broad bend of the River Wear and it’s made up of a fantastic landscape of deciduous woodland and reed fringed lakes and ponds, perfect environment for wildlife of all kinds. A brief gap in the weather meant I had chance to explore. By all the flotsam spread in amongst the trees along the river bank it was obvious it had only just started to fall back but it was still very high and was running the colour of strong tea. I slowly worked my way upstream finally reaching the remains of an old ford which had become a torrent of churning water. It provided the perfect subject matter to sum up the weeks weather.

The pack of Polariod worked perfectly producing a lovely fine grain negative full of beauiful tones, starting to really get rehooked on this expired Polariod malarky sadly some stocks are becoming harder and harder to find!

It was a great afternoon spent in a wonderful place but this was only the beginning of the wet weather and soon Cumbria, Yorkshire and now Galloway in the South West of Scoltand were being hit with massive floods, very sadly causing wide spread destruction to some of our most beautiful towns and villages forcing people from their homes.

If you have ever driven across the A66 motorway as it crosses over the wide expanse of fell and moorland between Bowes and Brough called Stainmore you may have noticed a black metal sign standing a short distance below the road. The sign is a replica of one which stood beside a train line that once past by here and simply reads “Stainmore Summit. Height 1370 Feet” this is the highest summit of any railway track in England and was an engineering feat of it’s age. But like so many of these rural lines “The South Durham and Lancashire Union Railway” didn’t survie the Beeching cuts of the 1960’s and the last train to pass this point was on the 5th of April 1965.

The Stainmore line has interested me for a while and few years ago I visited it not far from the summit sign and the photographs I took became one of my first posts on this blog called “Return to Bleath Gill” . On that morning in March 2013 a late fall of snow had covered the hills and the old railway embankments were covered by deep drifts. However this day couldn’t have been more different as I stepped out of the car to meet my friend and fellow photographer Gary Liggett on a bright crisp Autumn morning. So under a clear blue sky we started to follow the course of the line towards Bowes, soon reaching a shallow cutting lined on both sides by crumbling stone walls and the occasional gnarled alder tree. The rains the night before had turned the old bed of the railway into a quick flowing stream, almost transforming it from it’s heavy indusrtial past back into a moorland beck. It was then that I realised that in my rush to get ready I hadn’t brought all of my film. All I had was my 6 sheets of 5×4 in my grafmatic back and one role of 120 I found at the bottom of my camera bag, but luckily for me I still had what was left of my pack of Type 665 polaroid. So I was going to have to be careful with what I chose to shoot especially as the light was becoming more and more promising. Clouds had started to sweep in from the west casting long shadows over the landscape, it was becoming a perfect day to be on the moors with a camera.

All Became Water, Stainmore. Polaroid Type 665.

We continued on and soon the cutting opened out onto an embankment with a river, in fact River Greta running below us and infront wide views across the Forest of Stainmore. In the far distance a small plate layers hut came into view, it still had it’s chimney but it windows had been blocked up long ago. As we got closer we could see it’s door had been left off it’s hinges but inside it still had it’s small open fire hearth. These little shelters must have been a real life saver in cold days, which are common up here even during the summer. How many times during the life of this hut had it provided a respite for the railwaymen caught out in the snows and driving winds of deep winter?

The Long Haul, Stainmore.

As we passed by the hut and carried on it became obvious it was going to become increasingly difficult to get much further so we decided to turn round and start walking back towards the cars. Throughout the morning we hardly noticed our slow descent, but now Gary and I could really start to feel it as we headed back up towards the summit. It was turning out to be a long and steady haul and things were being made harder by the fact the ground which seemed solid at the begining still frozen from the previous night, had now thawed turning everything into oozing marsh. By time we reached our starting point we were both covered up to our knees in mud. Well at least it was at the end of the walk and not the begining.

In my last post I was reminiscing about the loss of Polaroid pos/neg film, especially my favourite the Type 665 pack. Well the devil makes use for idle hands and it wasn’t long before I couldn’t just sit and dream about past triumphs and I was searching through a popular online shopping site in search of a pack of Type 665. At first I didn’t have much luck, mainly because, as stocks of this film become ever more rare the price goes up but I kept on looking and eventually found a pack which sounded promising. It was pretty old film and had technically expired in August 1990! But in the description it stated the pack was unopened and had been stored in a fridge, so I decided to take a chance and buy it.

There are a few risks in buying any old expired film particularly when it comes to instant type films such as polaroid, if the pack of film hasn’t been stored correctly the liquid chemicals which do the developing and fixing can dry out and make the material completely useless. All these thoughts went through my mind as I set off to the edge of Hamsterley Forest a few miles up the road from my home in County Durham. Last Autumn I had driven past the top edge of the forest and I was struck by the stark forlorn looking birch trees left behind by the felling of the pine trees, it seemed to be the perfect spot close to home to try out my new film.

The Shen-Hao loaded and ready to go.

It was with a great deal of trepidation I pulled the tab of the first sheet of polaroid from the camera back (kindly loaned to me from my old college tutor John Quinn) and I had no idea it would work as well as it did!! I only took a few exposures wanting to save the rest of the film for another day, storing the neg part of the sheets in water to wash off the masses of black gloop that covers them after you have peeled them apart.

Once washed and dried I contact printed my favourite of the two negs on my usual Fomapan Chamois fiber based paper. I think this a negative I will definitely return to!

Today is the birthday of Frank Smythe probably one of the greatest mountain climbers of the early 20th Century. He was born on the 6th of July 1900 and from an early age he had a deep passion for the hills. During his climbing career he pioneered two new routes on the Brenva Face of Mont Blanc, the first ascent of Kamet (India) which in 1931 was the highest mountain yet climbed, and made attempts on Kangchenjunga (the second highest mountain in Nepal) and Mount Everest. His most successful expedition to Everest saw him reaching 28,120ft only a 1,000ft beneath the summit setting an altitude record for climbing without supplemental oxygen that was not broken until 1978! But what is rarely written about Frank Smythe was that not only was he a great alpine climber but also a passionate and gifted photographer. He didn’t just simply record his expeditions, he created stunning photographs of breath taking quality of the mountain landscapes he explored which he published in his numerous books such as “Camera In the Hills” “Over the Welsh Hills”, “Alpine Ways” and many more.

So in my own way I decided to celebrate the birthday of this great man by posting a few pictures from one of my own adventures in the hills. They where taken on a friend’s stag weekend in the southern Lake District. On the morning of the walk a heavy mist had rolled in off the Irish Sea, it lay thickly in the valleys and it wasn’t until we started to gain some height that the landscape around us really came into view.

Fox Haw and Long Mire. Ilford HP5, Yellow Filter.

The objective of the days climb was the steep rocky peak of the Caw which rises sharply from the craggy mass of the remote Dunnerdale Fells. As we began to near the summit more and more distant fells came into view, Ulpha, Harter, Grey Friar, and the lofty summit of White Maiden. After a quick break on the summit which was just about big enough for us all to sit and have a our lunch we started our descent back.

Caw and Cloud. Ilford HP5, Yellow filter.

We were picking our way down through the crags and mosses back towards where we started earlier that day at Stephens Ground when I stumbled across a small pool of water. It was crystal clear and through its base ran a thick seam of quartz which carried on up through the rock face beside it. I love finding hidden places like this, often overlooked they can be a microcosm of the greater landscape.

Roots of the Hill. Ilford HP5, Yellow filter.

It was a memorable day spent in the hills with great friends and I hope Frank would have approved of the pictures. Though only 1,600ft the Caw is a small hill compared to is more famous neighbours, but what it lacks in height it certainly makes up for in its grandeur, it is a true mountain in every sense, and as Frank put it himself;

“Comparisons between low hills and high hills are invidious. There is no denying the grandeur of the Himalayas; there is also no denying the grandeur of the British hills. I have seen Snowdon on a misty September morning as far removed from earth as Kangchenjunga. Altitude in terms of figures counts for little. It is the instant vision that matters”